Investigating White-Collar Crime – Tim Harris – S6E5

00:08 Rob Hanna:

Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast. You are now listening to Season 6 of the show. I’m your host Rob Hanna. This week I’m delighted to be joined by Tim Harris. Tim trained as a solicitor at Eversheds, before specialising in business and white-collar crime in the financial services sector at Bark and Co Solicitors and then Simmons and Simmons. While at Simmons, Tim was a legal secondee at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Now he is counsel at Cohen and Gresser LLP. Tim’s practice focuses on white-collar crime defence, including international and regulatory investigations, regulatory enforcement and financial crime compliance. So a very warm welcome Tim. Good to have you on the show. And before we dive into all your fun projects and experiences to date, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the Legally Speaking Podcast, which is on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being very well, in terms of reality of the law, what would you rate the hit TV series Suits in terms of the reality?

01:11 Tim Harris:

I haven’t seen it. My dad loves it. And he tells me that it’s very good and that I ought to watch it. But I don’t, I haven’t. There’s a number of other legal dramas that I do watch, Better Call Saul at the moment is something that I’m watching and enjoying good stuff. But no, but no, Suits.

01:28 Rob Hanna:

And that’s fair enough. And with that, we should give it a no, based on the fact you haven’t seen it and a 0 and let’s go on to talk all about you. So to begin with Tim, would you mind just telling our listeners a bit about your background and journey?

01:40 Tim Harris:

Background? Blimey, well, I’m a history graduate from Durham University, and then spent some time teaching in Japan on the JET Program. I was always intending to come to law. I’ve done some law placements before university and had enjoyed those. And I’ve got a sense that I wanted to do disputes work, but possibly criminal work too. And while I was attending the normal drinks gatherings at university, didn’t seem like there was a lot of options to do criminal law at commercial corporate law firms. But then coming back from Japan, I then did the law conversion course. And when I was doing that, I began to see that there were ways in which you could do criminal law in a commercial setting, whether it was sort of corporate manslaughter, which was coming through at the time, but really actually was doing the equity markets module, which is where I saw that inside of dealing had an applicability to blend corporate commercial with criminal law. And that’s really what I was interested in doing really thereafter. And when I was at Eversheds, when I trained, I did a seat in the litigation team. And 1 of the pieces of work that they were working on was for a chap called McQuoid, which was the first essay then, prosecution of insider dealing, which I worked on. And then I qualified in 2009, which was a difficult time and uncertain market. There was nothing for me at Eversheds on the white-collar space. I did a couple of mini pupillages. And while I was there, I was introduced to a solicitor who worked at Bark & Co and I landed there and more or less immediately as she was brought into work on FSA work, trial work and which where I did some inside of dealing cases and market abuse and fraud in the financial services sector and haven’t really looked back from that.

03:13 Rob Hanna:

Yeah and obviously, you’ve achieved a tremendous amount, which we’ll we’ll definitely get on to and speaking of Evershed, so you were a trainee there at the time, you mentioned. You know, what seats did you choose and which was your favourite seat and why?

03:25 Tim Harris:

I did 4 seats, corporate, litigation, real estate and competition. I think probably the competition seat was my favourite of all those 4, principally because it was a busy time, but it was 2008 going on 9, the world was sort of turning upside down after the Lehman Brothers crash. But there was a lot of activity with the CMA. I think they were just then the CMA rather than the OFT. They were raids. So in the 6 months, I was in the Eversheds team there were 2 raids. And so there was a lot of, a lot of work, we were also conducting an investigation on behalf of a very large multinational consumer goods companies. So there was a lot of interviewing of individuals and liaising with legal counsel there. So that was when I sort of also began to sort of think about the investigations piece as well. And so that’s why I think I told, they were really nice people. It was a good team, and it still remains that way.

04:18 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And when you mentioned the Lehman’s crash, it brings me back to when I was first trying to get my my graduate job because that’s when I was starting. So opportunities were sparse. So I always say I’ve had experience now of going through a recession and a pandemic. So what else are you going to chuck at me I think is the way I look at it. But with regards to you obviously, you touched on it before that you’ve moved to Bark, you moved to Bark & Co Solicitors specialising in business and white-collar crime, and particularly in the financial services sector then before joining Simmons and now at your current firm, but why did you choose to specialise in this area of law and what was most appealing about it to you?

04:50 Tim Harris:

Well, yeah, as I say going back to that time when I first began to see this nexus between the financial services world which is 1 of the UK is principal economic engines and an interesting space to be in and the nexus with that and the criminal law, which I sort of inherently seem to be drawn to. I did some work that very early on in the law placements that I did around, less though when I was when I was first looking to get into this area. And I enjoyed the procedure, the law and the drama, frankly. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen Suits but there’s other TV dramas do seem to largely focus on the criminal law and as 1 QC I worked with, and now work with, said to me criminal law is rock and roll. And it’s interesting to say the least to see how criminal legal regimes and offences that are created by the government are used to maintain the integrity of the financial markets. And there’s a lot of discussion about whether creating criminal offences is the best means to encourage better culture and best practices in financial markets. I certainly think as a role of for a compliance officer, which I’ve done, having an offence and or having culture encapsulated within an offence helps to reinforce the message around conduct which and around potentially breaching laws, which I think is very helpful for them when they’re trying to express a message to their bankers about the sorts of conduct that’s expected of them and and which could end up in jail if they admit it.

06:10 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, no, absolutely and thanks for sharing that. And, Tim, I think you’ll be our first guest to really sort of specialise in the world of white-collar crime. So maybe going back to basics for our listeners, in simple terms, can you explain what white collar-crime is, what is regulatory enforcement, and then financial crime compliance?

06:28 Tim Harris:

White-collar is a catch all term, which has become used commonly, it’s I guess, it’s an American term, but it’s, I suppose I would see it as the criminal advice of individuals and companies involved in investigations and prosecutions in professional markets. And so they’re white-collar workers, those professional workers as opposed to blue collar workers. And that work typically involves defending individuals in criminal and regulatory investigations, but also can involve a corporate too, but I think it typically is for individuals. Regulatory enforcement is not criminal. It’s as the name says it’s the enforcement of regulatory obligations by the authorities tasked with managing the certain aspects of that regulatory regime. So whether it’s the FCA, financial markets, who would also have criminal powers, but they have a regulatory component to that, and that might be the competition markets, the insolvency service and the accounting regulator, as well the FRC. So there’s a huge panoply of a different regulatory authorities who, each of whom have their own expectations about the people and companies that they regulate, and individuals and companies have been can get into litigation and disputes with their regulator over what they’re supposed to have done or not done. And then I suppose financial crime compliance is typically advising companies on aspects of their business that is set up to maintain and control financial crime risk, you know, anti-money laundering systems and controls, the banks, for instance, and sanctions is now you know, a hot topic. And they are required by the FCA to have systems and controls to prevent them, their businesses being used for financial crime. And so they are, they typically seek us out to advise them about, you know, the implementation of systems and controls. And we often work with forensic accountants and other advisors to advise clients on setting up their systems controls.

08:20 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, so it’s fair to say it’s diverse and that’s why I’m so fascinated by your area of law, because you get to sort of get involved with lots of different things. And as I mentioned, you had a very progressive story, you’ve obviously been judicially successful. And now at Cohen and Gresser, your current firm, you represent companies and individuals, particularly on complex financial crime and regulatory matters. So what type of matters are you dealing with at the moment?

08:40 Tim Harris:

It’s very, yeah, you’re right to say that it varies on the white-collar crime side. We’re often dealing with individuals in multinational investigations, typically triggered by the US authorities who suspect that there’s criminal conduct, and they may be working and liaising with overseas counterparts over here in the SFO or HMRC, to look to bring those individuals to what they think is justice. So we act for individuals involved in those processes, possibly as people who are suspected of being involved in the criminal conduct, but also individuals who might have information to assist with the investigation or those sorts of offences. And there is also national investigations as well, that the SFO typically at the moment is concentrating on national UK types of fraud rather than the multinational work that we saw them carrying and investigating under the previous director. So there’s that as well. So, you know, a lot of the high-profile investigations, the SFO announced, where we’ll act for individuals in those matters. On the investigation side we’re acting for private equity funds and family offices and small corporates, certainly at Cohen and Gresser we tend to act for the smaller regulated parties rather than at Simmons. So sometimes a slightly more narrow, focused investigation but often working with other firms and advisors and e-discovery vendors. Often times we’re doing due diligence work for clients who are trying to satisfy banks or financial institutions that it’s appropriate to lend to them in situations where they’re doing deals or transactions in high-risk countries or in high-risk sectors. So that’s pretty varied.

10:15 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, very fascinating stuff. And you touched on it there. But I’m just curious to know a little bit more. Can you tell us more about Cohen & Gresser as a firm and what makes it different to other law firms in your opinion?

10:25 Tim Harris:

Yeah, we’re unusual. We’re a new player in the London market, roughly about 4 years that we’re unusual insofar as we’re a multi-jurisdictional boutique, but based in the principle jurisdictions for financial crime enforcement in New York, Washington, London, and Paris. Our main reputation is in the white-collar crime and securities litigation space, and we have specialists in in each of those 4 offices. But then we also have a corporate and regulatory and other non-contentious areas. But at the moment, we’re sort of building those out. But really, the heart of the firm is the white-collar and the securities practice. And here in London, we’re based in St. James’s, which is a bit unusual. There’s not very many law firms around us. But we’re here for a particular reason, which is the clients we want to work with are here, whether that’s private equity, or family offices or other funds. And we’ve got to focus on building the team through senior hires. So I work with a lot of senior barristers such as John Gibson, Richard Kovaleski QC, and Sir David Green, former director of the SFO who are used to working on the very top matters as prosecutors, so that we feel like we’re very well placed to be able to provide clients with expert advice, anticipating what the authorities will be expecting and thinking.

11:35 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, no, I love it. And it’s it is a little bit different. But I love the fact that it is that sort of multi-jurisdictional aspect and all the work that you’re doing. Time for a quick break from the show. You wouldn’t leave a potential client waiting in your office for 3 days. But what about when it comes to returning potential clients, phone calls, emails, or even web inquiries. If you’re not responding rapidly to those who inquire about your firm’s services, you could be losing money, losing clients and affecting your law firm’s reputation, thankfully, as a resource from our sponsor Clio that can help you, called how to grow your firm with legal client intake. It’s a free guide that will show you exactly how and why you should be automating your client intake process. Download your free copy at clio.com forward slash UK forward slash free intake guide. That’s Clio c l i o dot com forward slash UK forward slash free intake guide. Now back to the show. It’s fair to say Tim that you’ve been involved in some of the most high-profile investigations and a number of them and trials, public inquiries, so I know it’s difficult, but which particular matters particularly stood out to you?

12:51 Tim Harris:

Well, I mean, at Bark & Co, there was the investigations were typically public investigations, where we were acting for individuals who had been through a corporate investigation process and then being prosecuted at the end of it. And like I say they were high profile, they were individuals who had quite a lot of publicity around them. So there was paparazzi and going into court, and there was plenty of media interest. I spent quite a lot of time at that time, largely because of there was such a lot of interest in the collapse in the financial services sector, dealing with incoming interest from the media and figuring out how to deal with that or not to deal with it or to ignore it. So in that time, we acted for Asil Nader, that was a pretty old case, a chap called Kweku Adoboli and and then the FCA prosecutions of Operation Tabernula and then iSOFT. So that was all big matters, and still, to a certain extent, talked about still and often running into people who who worked on on those matters in 1 form or another. Yeah, it’s amazing how they continue to live on. At Simmons we were involved in a lot of the high, most high-profile biggest matters, but tends to be in a more confidential, on a more confidential basis. So either our role was confidential, or the matter itself was confidential, and the individuals or the corporates that were acting for weren’t necessarily in the spotlight for the wrongdoing, but they were individuals or parties who were providing information to the authorities. So there were fewer trials as well. But often they were high stakes matters. I think the probably the most high-profile matter that I worked with there was on the Select Committee Inquiries into the collapse of British Home Stores, which was an interesting experience because of the interplay with the legal teams, the forensics and the PR teams and then the politics and the civil service on on the other side. There wasn’t a huge amount of law around the procedure, but it was, you know, about carefully calibrating the response in a way in which would mitigate the reputational risks to the parties involved in providing information to the committees and and trying to understand often with the PR folks what sort of questions were likely to come out from the politicians who were often trying to grandstand to make points about collapse, which they could use subsequently. So that was a really interesting experience.

14:59 Rob Hanna:

I’m just loving listening to all your experiences and what your journey has been going through there, and I just want to kind of backtrack a little bit because as a secondee in financial crime compliance at Bank of America, it’s interesting because people are always trying to get secondments or can’t quite secure them, you know, what experiences did you gain? And what did you learn whilst on your secondment?

15:19 Tim Harris:

Yeah, they are really valuable experiences to gain. And I think some firms are better at providing them than others. If I was a junior lawyer, I would encourage people to try to seize whatever opportunity they’ve got to go on with clients secondment. Particularly 1 that I brought in, was brought in specifically to deal with a UK compliance and remediation issue, but which had global consequences for the amendments of the bank systems and controls. And it was complicated, and really gave me a really good insight to understand the very difficult role that compliance have as opposed to the legal team but the compliance team of a bank having advising the business while also trying to act as an interpreter to them as to what the FCA expects, and the reforms that are seeking to being sought to be implemented. And it’s difficult to particularly with a bank that sort of headquartered outside the UK to impress upon colleagues outside the UK, the importance of the changes that we might be making in order to satisfy you know, our UK regulatory obligations. And it’s a pretty complicated choreographer dance, and then politics and diplomacy, which I think a lot of lawyers don’t necessarily have. And so yeah, it was quite a sharp learning curve on the diplomatic side. But also, I think framing and drafting advice for the benefit of internal corporate clients, I think that’s a really important skill for lawyers in private practice to see how their advice is, is implemented within the organisation.

16:41 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that. That’d be super helpful for people, particularly who are looking to try and secure secondments and what benefits you receive from that. So sticking back to sort of, you know, your your bread and butter when it comes to white-collar crime, you know, what are the key issues affecting white-collar crime and investigations legal market at the moment? And what are the growth areas of work, you predict?

17:02 Tim Harris:

Well, there’s always a lot happening in the white-collar space, which is what makes it so fascinating, really, that is the legislation that might introduce new new offences, and this sort of discussion around the introduction of a new corporate failure to prevent economic crime or the introduction of new enforcement tools, and which will better help UK authorities to disrupt organised and financial crime that you might see, for instance, around the Russian crisis, at the moment. There’s the Economic Crime Act has come in and there’ll be a new 1 coming in the next month or 2. There’s also judgments that come out, you know, relatively regularly, that affect the way that investigations are carried out, particularly around legal privilege and how that can be maintained, and also the production of data. When you’re working on global investigations, there’s always issues around data and managing data, and then bringing data into the UK. There was a leading judgement on that last year. And the white-collar team, we always just get sent all the weird stuff that no one else really knows what to deal with in the team. So crypto regulation is something we’re looking at as well as ESG issues around greenwashing. And so it’s a really, really varied menu of different things that come our way. It’s fair to say that the Ukraine crisis creates a lot of sanctions advisory work, and also considerations about who firms should and can act for. At the moment, there’s not been any challenges to the sanctions designations or issues around the payment of legal fees to the designated people. So we’re anticipating that there’ll be some judicial review work as the Ukraine crisis moves into its next stage. There’s also a really interesting question, which we expect will be coming up coming going forward, which is both a political and legal question as to what to do with all the hundreds of billions of funds and assets that are currently frozen in the UK and the Biden administration is talking about bringing in new legislation, which will better enable them to seize and repatriate those funds to Ukraine. But there’s all sorts of legal due process issues around that, as well as political, political concerns about doing that and how to manage all of that. So that’s, that’s a really interesting one. I think the SFO are pretty quiet. And so some of the investigations work has possibly slowed down as a result of their rather than the sort of paralysed at the moment, we’ve got internal reviews into their disclosure failings, which which is ongoing, which is due out quite soon. So that might change things. But at the moment, that area, which has been quite busy, has sort of slowed down. So people are trying to find new areas to work and as I say, that’s that’s sort of taking people into interesting areas around crypto and cannabis regulation and also ESG, which we were anticipating is going to be a big thing over the next while, I mean, it’s already creating interesting issues and legal risks that we didn’t anticipate 5 years ago, particularly around to the climate change litigation, but we anticipate that that’s going to be a growth area.

19:39 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, and thanks for sharing that. It’s interesting you mentioned crypto it’s something that I’m personally very interested in and you know, particularly here on the Legally Speaking Podcast as well. We have our own sort of NFT drop happening soon and we’re also moving to hopefully having our own creator coin connected to the show and yeah, I have my own Web3 consultancy and I just think there’s crypto and we’re getting more and more guests come on talking about that and DeFi and DAOs and all these others things that are emerging. So it’s a super exciting time, particularly in the world of legal and how that’s going to dovetail into your area of law, I can imagine it’s going to be super busy and sticking with the word busy, you know Tim, you have a very high-profile, busy practice. And you know, 1 thing we’re passionate about on the show is trying to humanise the profession and let people know that you know, it is possible to achieve what you’ve done and everyone can do that. But what do you do to sort of you know, look after yourself in terms of downtime, relax outside of work, how do you sort of avoid not taking work home with you and really sort of focusing on yourself and what do you do get up to for downtime?

20:32 Tim Harris:

Well, I’ve got a very long commute into the office I live down on the south coast just outside Brighton. So that’s the upside of of having that long commute is that there is some time to book the downside on my way home. But I’ve been very much a believer in the importance of exercise and team sports to you know, to improve my mental health and obviously of course physical health. So I play football and like golf and variety of other sports. I even played put on the the rugby beats a couple of weeks ago for the first time in 10 years, which, which actually wasn’t as horrific as I was anticipating it was. So whether that would be something new, I don’t know. But yeah, cold water swimming, I do a bit of that as well. I’ve got a pedal board as well. So there’s plenty of things to do to keep you active. And we’ve got a lot of dogs in our office. Actually, I think it’s an unusual and unusual aspect of our business. But we’re quite small, and we’re over 2 floors. So a lot of people bring in their dogs. And you know, that’s great. And I think, you know, there’s a lot to be said, for the cuddling, for cuddling dogs. And although I regard myself as a cat person, I do you still enjoy, you know, having a dog sometimes in the office, particularly if they when they walk into the glassroom, office spaces that we’ve got. So there’s there’s always there’s always comedic potential brought buddies.

21:40 Rob Hanna:

Yeah. And I love that. And it sounds like you keep very active, which is great. Yeah, the thought of me putting on rugby boots again, I think that’ll be a shocking experience, long are the days and folks people should know, Tim and I actually went to the same school many, many years back. So that’s how we sort of came to know each other through the world of legal as well. And yeah, I’m a big fan of the dogs. So everyone who follows me knows I’ve got a miniature dachshund called Otto, who brings a lot of fun and joy to the community. So I’m Tim, it’s been an absolute pleasure sort of having you on the show, but just want to ask a final question, because you have achieved a lot and you have been hard working, you’ve got a very very prestigious role within a very prestigious law firm. It’s clearly going to do big things in London and on a journey. But what advice would you give to lawyers or those in the legal profession, interested in getting into white-collar crime and really making it successful?

22:25 Tim Harris:

It is critical to attend trials and hearings, whether it’s ideally, it would be in the white-collar space, but it can also be civil to it shows enthusiasm for that particular area and just to sort of an understanding of how the thought process works. Certainly when I was at law school, I attended a couple of defamation trials and hearings at the Old Bailey, which was, which was really super useful and gave me plenty of stuff to talk about when I was, when I was being interviewed. I don’t think as well as that is particularly from Brighton, in our area, there’s all sorts of good investigative journalism, which I encourage people to read, so Putin’s People is very good by Catherine Belton and Kleptopia by Tom Burgis, particularly on the sort of the role of London as the so called laundered, kleptocratic money is a really good area and is something that’s quite useful for to give you making difficult decisions around sanctions. If you pick up Catherine Belton’s book, it’s a good way to decide whether you want to have anything to do with that particular organisation or individuals, certainly, if they’re mentioned the books, probably a good idea stay well away. Yeah. But there’s all sorts of great things to read out there in the white-collar space.

23:25 Rob Hanna:

Brilliant. Well, thanks for giving those tips and suggestions. Super, super helpful. And if our listeners would like to know more about sort of white-collar crime defence, regulatory investigation, or financial crime compliance, what’s the best way for them to maybe get in touch with you feel free to shout out any web handles or social media, and we’ll also share them with this episode for you too.

23:42 Tim Harris:

Yeah, well, just probably through the website, Cohen and Gresser dot com. You’ll find my profile on the website, my phone number and email and people are welcome to get in touch with those 2 methods if they’re interested in talking more about space.

23:53 Rob Hanna:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so so much for coming on the show, Tim. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on and from all of us on the Legally Speaking Podcast for now wishing you lots of continued success for your career, but over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you liked the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration hub, the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord, goes to our website www dot Legally Speaking Podcast dot com for the link to join our community there. Over and out.